It was hot at the Fairground
and dust devils danced across
the dirt field. As she looked around, Sandy remembered the times she
and Liz,
her best friend and cousin, had been there, showing off 4-H projects
and eating
everything fried and on a stick they could get their hands on. But,
today she
was there as Sheriff, and the crowd was here on the invitation of a
politician
so he could proselytize as the people ate his food and drank his beer.

S

he
couldn’t help but look for Liz, in the crowd; but dead
is dead. A vicious attack and rape during their junior year in high
school left
Liz in a coma that ended in her death. Then, Sandy couldn’t wait to
finish high
school and leave. She travelled 2,000 miles to college then was
commissioned a
2nd Lt. in the Army as soon as she graduated.

Now she was back.

This wasn’t her dream job. Her
dream was to go from the Army
to the Secret Service. But when her frail dad wrote her that her still
active
mother, Dottie, was waltzing down the aisles of the grocery store and a
few
days later sang “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” from Mary Poppins at a friend’s
funeral,
Sandy realized her father couldn’t handle the situation; she
reluctantly asked
for and was granted a Hardship Discharge. She moved back in with her
parents—in
the house where she grew up—in her old room. Sometimes life sucks.

Soon after her arrival, the
much-loved Sheriff decided to
chase a kid running from a robbery. Sheriff Jessup was a heavy smoker,
and at
300 pounds, a heart attack waiting to happen. Chasing the kid finished
the
waiting.

The job was open. Sandy hired
Olivia to take care of her
parents while she campaigned and was elected in June. She was there for
her
parents, and she was able to use some of her Army MP experience. All
good.

“God Bless America!” Steve
shouted above the cheering crowd
and stepped back so his political advisor, Phil, could get to the
podium and
add, “Let’s give it up for our next congressman, Steve Wright!”

Phil left the stage while Steve
was still approaching the
mic. Standing tall, with his million dollar smile, a distinguished
touch of
grey at the temples of his perfectly coiffed dark hair, and 6’3” of
swaggering
bullet-proof attitude, Steve was exactly what the party had been
looking for in
a candidate. There was even a pretty wife and daughter who showed up
and smiled
when they were told to.

Phil was definitely not cut
from the same cloth. At 5’7”, he
had a bad black-dyed comb-over, a grey suit that didn’t quite button
across his
belly, and a cheap blue-striped tie that hung loosely at the open neck
of his
shirt.Phil nodded
at the Sheriff’s
Deputies who were in front of the stage. They kept most of the crowd
back after
the speech while Steve shook hands and kissed babies. It was no secret
to his
staff that while he was politically ambitious, he hated to press the
flesh. So
when he looked at Phil and rolled his eyes, Phil signaled security and
they
surrounded Steve and got him back to his shiny motor coach with its big
banner,
“Make the Wright Vote!”

“Whew! I hate going to these
things. Can’t we just buy more
ads?” Steve asked while pumping a couple of good squirts of sanitizer
on his
hands.

“Nope, people love to vote for
someone they think they
know,” said Phil as he leaned back and used a toothpick to clean under
his
nails.

Steve looked at the big sign in
front of the school
announcing it was the 1987 State Football Championship Winner. He
smiled,
“Those were the days! You’d be surprised how many people around here
remember
me quarterbacking that year.”

“Not really. I get my ear bent
about that every day. Hasn’t
anybody done anything interesting in this town since then?”

“Phil, Phil, Phil. You have to
understand small town
football. Everybody went to the game on Friday night. If you weren’t on
the
team or a cheerleader, you didn’t count.’87 was our year; won every single game. They loved
us.”

“Well, let’s hope those good
feelings last at least through
November,” Phil tossed a folder to Steve. “Here’s your speech for the
fundraiser tonight. Practice.”

Back in the office, Sandy
plopped down in her wooden swivel
chair with sweat-darkened arm rests. The room was designed more for
function
than looks.Looking
around, she saw a
beige linoleum floor with a path worn from her chair to the door. A
vintage
wood desk set, several unmatched chairs, and old steel files passed for
furniture. The walls were an institutional taupe that still showed
where
Sheriff Jessup’s “grip & grin” pictures had hung. Sandi
shrugged her
shoulders. Fixing up her office could wait.

Sandy personally thought that
too much time had been wasted
providing security for the twenty minute political speech, but there
were side
benefits; getting to see people, like Mrs. Ayers, her sixth-grade
teacher.When her
beloved teacher walked up with her
head twisted toward the sky, she said, “You certainly grew into a tall
one! I
thought you’d take more after your mother’s people.”

“Of course, just let me know
when,” and she bent down and
gave Mrs. Ayres a hug.

As her old teacher walked off,
Sandy surveyed the crowd.
They seemed to have come more for the free hot dogs and beer than the
candidate, Steve Wright. She vaguely remembered him from high school, a
jock
with an attitude. Well, he certainly still had the attitude.

When she
took the job, Sandy was surprised to discover that
there were areas and rooms that looked like something out of the
“Hoarders”
show, especially one store room where the door had been stuck shut.
Sheriff
Jessup hadn’t been much for maintaining case files, and when the
station got
computers in 1995, no one had the guts to go back and try to enter all
the
existing files. Time passed, people moved on, and the hinges on the
door rusted
in place.

After trying to ignore it for
three weeks, Sandy had two of
her volunteer staff, Jim and Alec break open the door and do their best
to
bring some sort of order to it all. The back corner was occupied by one
of
those old, huge chest freezers nearly buried under cardboard boxes so
old they
were partially collapsed on themselves. When they cleared off the top
of the
freezer, it was grimy and scattered with mouse droppings.
“Hey,” Jim, an eager volunteer with plans for a career in
law enforcement hollered, “this thing is still plugged in! And the top
is
frozen shut!”

Sandy
heard the commotion and came in. “Unplug it,” she
said. “Maybe tomorrow we can get it open.” Freezers were often used for
storing
evidence. In fact, there was one in the evidence storage room, but it
was empty
except for the Weight Watchers frozen meals the clerk liked. The idea
that this
had been sitting unopened, probably for years, did not make her eager
to see
what might be inside.

Steve
preened in front of the mirror. Of course the new tux
was exquisite. Wilkes Bashford only sells the best. He glanced behind
him in
the mirror and saw Cindy, his wife, pulling a purple cocktail dress
from her
closet.

“Put that disgusting thing
back,” he said as he pointed to
the offending garment. You got that at Penney’s didn’t you?”

“Well, yeah,” she replied
defensively.

“How do
you expect me to raise serious money tonight if you
look like you borrowed your dress from the maid? Put on the long silver
dress.”

“But Steve, you know it’s hot
to wear and it’s warm out
tonight,” she whined.

He looked at her pointedly and
then down to the yellow-green
bruise on her upper arm. “You need to look like I’m worth it to the
donors and
you need to cover up that damn bruise. It’s a fundraising party, not a
pity
party.”

Cindy lowered her eyes and
switched the dresses. It wouldn’t
do to have him get upset just before the fundraiser. Some party, she
thought.
She wasn’t dumb, she knew that he was taking her to keep up his “Family
First”
image. Her job was to stand near—but not too near—the big man and keep
a loving
smile on her face. No one would actually have a conversation with her;
they
only wanted to talk with Steve.

Once she was finished dressing
and had passed his inspection,
Cindy went down the hall to say goodbye to their daughter, Allison, a
junior at
Towering Oaks High. “Ali, sweetie, be sure to finish your homework and
get to
bed on time, it’s a school night. There’s a veggie pizza in the freezer
for
dinner.”

“Whoop,” said Ali flatly and
looked up from her iPad.
Glancing at her mom, she added disdainfully, “Long sleeves, huh?”

Cindy turned her head as if
she’d been slapped. It was bad
enough that her husband hit her; Ali had always heard it and as a
teenager
she’d lost all respect for her mom.

“Driver’s here.” Steve shouted
from downstairs. Cindy looked
back again to her beloved daughter’s cold eyes, and left.

The evening was every
unpleasant thing Cindy had expected.
She recognized that the champagne was expensive, and figured the money
spent
just on it tonight could have kept the food pantry for the poor open
for over a
month. Her only fun had been listening to some of the donors’ trying to
convince Steve that they were very important people and he should be
grateful
for their money. If—no she had to remember to think and say—“when” he
gets
elected, these same people, she knew, would be the first in line to
tell him
which legislation he should back, and whose charity events to show up
at.

Driving home in the back of the
limo, Steve looked at the
checks and smiled. He’d give them to Phil in the morning, but it felt
good to
hold them for a while.

He turned to Cindy and his demeanor changed. “Did you
have
to pick up that shrimp with your fingers like a hick? Everyone else
used a
knife and fork. Can’t you at least pay attention to how others are
eating and
try to get it right?”

“Sorry,” she turned her head
away.

“Yea,
you are, but I’m stuck with you.”

Cindy didn’t even try to
respond. Their high school romance,
the football star and the head cheerleader, (how classic!) By the time
she told
him she was pregnant in August, he was ready to leave for college on a
football
scholarship. It was a religious college and when he confided in his
coach,
Steve was told to “put a ring on it” right away or lose his free ride.
So they
married. He spent four years getting an education and basking in
football
glory. She spent the same four years taking care of a colicky baby and
working
at the Piggly-Wiggly.Among
other things,
he’d always held her trapping him with the pregnancy and lack of
education
against her—and found a million ways to throw it in her face.

When they got home, he
wordlessly poured himself a stiff
scotch, grabbed a dog treat from the jar under the bar, and headed into
his
office followed closely by the golden lab he’d picked up at the animal
shelter
when he’d decided to run. A family looks good with a fluffy dog.

When
Sandy got to the office in the morning, Jim was already
hard at work on the freezer. “I just love a mystery,” he said eagerly.
Slender
with his dark hair worn in a short flattop, he looked a lot younger
than his 20
years. He went to lift the top. The rubber gasket had deteriorated into
a crispy
mess and dark bits of it crumbled to the floor as the top screeched
angrily at
being opened.

There wasn’t much to see. Thick
ice coated the sides and the
bottom. They could see two flats of bottled water, a pack of hot dog
rolls that
crumbled to dust when Jim touched them, and a partial bag of hot dogs.
Under
the water flats, they could just make out something that looked like an
old
paper grocery bag.

“Okay if I get everything out
so I can empty the chest,
Sheriff?” asked Jim.

“Why would you want to do
that?” Sandy asked.

“Well, if I let it thaw out,
whatever’s in the brown stuff
might get ruined. Maybe it’s something important.”

“Unlikely.”

“It’s that or I have to go
sweep out the car barn and it’s
heading up to 105 degrees out there.”

“Gotcha. Have fun chopping ice.”

Sandy grabbed a cup of coffee
from the break room and headed
back to her desk to review the reports for the last few years as a way
to get
to know her job better. June had been bad for rural mailboxes. She
smiled. So
it was still a local tradition for graduating seniors to play mailbox
baseball.

No suspects were
arrested—another local tradition.

There were all the usual car
crashes, medical emergencies,
domestic disputes, and work for the courts; pretty much what she’d been
told to
expect. The coffee was down to cold dregs when Jim ran in her office,
“Hey,
look at this!” He held out the paper bag from the freezer and she
grabbed for
it just before he put in on his desk.

“There’s still frost on this,
let’s put it on the counter in
the break room,” she said leading the way. Once it was down on the gold
spotted
Formica countertop, she looked at it carefully. Someone had taken the
time to
tape it securely, but there was no writing on it.

“This is odd,” she mumbled.
“Probably more picnic stuff.”
Sandy grabbed a pair of red-handled scissors and cut carefully through
the bag.
Holding the end, she shook out the contents. “Shit,” she said quietly
when she
saw what slid out. There were two containers, a small rape kit and a
12” x 18”
manila envelope that had tape all over it. Under the “Freezer” label
was
handwritten information. It was dated October 23, 1987, 11:15 pm.The incident number was
87-052901, victim Liz
G. There was a list of ten evidence envelopes inside and was signed and
sealed
by Sheriff William Jessup.

Stunned, Sandy let out a low
whistle. She knew that getting
rape kits analyzed had formerly been a slow and sometimes haphazard
process
until recently when the public and lawmakers had made it a priority.
She knew
old unanalyzed kits still popped up from time to time. But she’d never
expected
to find anything like that here—and especially not this one. Liz G.
Wow. She
scratched her head and looked at the box under it.

“What’s that?” the ever curious
Jim asked.

Sandy regained her composure
and turned to him. “Jim, you’ve
done a real service here. This is an old kit from a rape investigation
from
1987. Everyone in town thought it had been sent off for analysis, and
after
asking about it for a couple of years, most forgot about it.”

“Is it still any good after all
those years?”

“If it was kept frozen the
whole time, probably yes.”

Wide-eyed, Jim picked up the
remains of the paper bag. A
sheet of white paper slipped out. “Does this mean anything?” he said
picking it
up from the floor.

“It’s the Evidence Transfer
Form,” she said without emotion.
“The fact that it’s in here means it was never filed.”

She sucked in air. Apparently
Jessup had decided not to take
a chance it could solve the crime. After all, the girl died; why ruin
the lives
of the football players too? Or was this secret a way of guaranteeing
campaign
funds for re-elections?

Looking
at Jim, she thanked him again, “and, can you get me
the state lab on the line?”

A minute later, Jim poked his
head into her office. “Got it,
his name is Greg.”

She hit her speakerphone
button. “Greg, this is Sheriff
Sandy Blaine.”

“Heard about your election,
congratulations,” said Greg.
“What can I do for you?”

“We just found evidence in the
freezer of a rape that took
place in 1987. Can you do anything with it?”

“Put it back on ice. Tomorrow,
I have someone picking up
evidence not far from you. I’ll have him pick it up sometime after 2
pm. Can
you dig out the Evidence Transfer Sheet?”

“Not a problem. Thanks.”

“Any rush?”

“The vic was left in a coma and
died from her injuries about
four months after the rape. She was my cousin.”

That evening when Sandy got
home, she sat at the kitchen
table with her head in her hands. Olivia, came over, “Looks like you
had a hard
day, can I get you something?”

“I’d sure love one of your
special coffees.”

Olivia smiled, “Coming right
up!” She went to the cabinet
and got out a little pod of dark-roast coffee for the machine, the
Baileys
Irish Cream, and the whipped cream can from the fridge. Three minutes
later she
put the steaming mug of goodness in Sandy’s hands.

She took a sip, “Thanks, I
needed this.”

“Want someone to talk to?”
Olivia asked. “I’m a good
listener, and your mom is in the dining room dancing to Moon River with
Andy
Williams. I’ve got the phonograph set up so the record keeps repeating
itself.”

“He’s dead, right?”

“Not in her world. I’ve got the
sound down low so it won’t
wake up your dad. I told her it was more romantic that way and she
giggled.”

“I’m not ready to talk details,
but let’s just say a blast
from the past came back and bit me today. Bit me real hard,” she smiled
weakly.
“Before you leave, could you get Dad up from his nap?”

After dinner, Sandy got her mom
settled in front of the TV;
who knew you could still get reruns of Lawrence Welk? She and her dad
sat at
the kitchen table and played Scrabble.

“Your turn, Sandy,” he said.

“Oh.” She shook her head to
clear it.

“Not
really concentrating on the game. You okay?”

“Sorry, I’m too distracted
tonight.”

“Let’s go watch the show with
Dottie. I think I hear the
Lennon Sisters.”

“Why not.”

Sandy was
gratified that the crime
lab had pushed the old evidence to the top of their pile and there was
enough
evidence for them to work with. The results came back in record time.
She
looked at the report and whistled. Liz would have justice… finally.

There were
positive results for three
members of the 1987 Championship Football Team. Number one on the list
was
Steve Wright.

She got an
arrest warrant then called
his campaign headquarters to get his schedule. His lunch at the Rotary
was
over, and he was back at good old Towering Oaks High leading an
assembly on
government. She chuckled to herself, arresting him there would
certainly be a
lesson for the kids, but it really wasn’t the best choice.

There was going
to be a cocktail party
for donors at 5:30 pm, and that felt like a better time. Sandy took two
deputies, Linda and Ralph, to back her up. They drove over the country
club
where the party was being held, and went in together.

They were
barely in the ballroom with
its bright crystal chandeliers and dark red carpet when Phil saw them
approaching and tried to cut them off; “Private party.”

“We’re here on
business.”

Phil motioned
to an area outside the
room, “Perhaps we can discuss it over here.”

“WE are not
going to discuss
anything. I’m here to see Steve Wright, and there he is,” she nodded
toward the
big windows overlooking the golf course. “Excuse me.” The Sheriff
stepped
forward.

Sputtering,
“But…” Phil realized he
wasn’t going to stop her, so got out of her way.

Walking up to
Steve, she saw his wife
trying to hide behind him. Sandy looked him in the eye, “Steve Wright,
I’m
arresting you for the murder of Liz Garrison.”As she Mirandized him, her deputy, Ralph, stepped up
and put the
handcuffs on Steve.

He smiled. “I
don’t think so.”

Sandy said, “We
just got back the
evaluation of the rape kit, and your semen was found in her body.”

“I raped her,
I’ll give you that
much,” Steve said casually, with a hint of a grin. “But the statute of
limitations expired years ago. I didn’t hurt her. She was knocked out
when we
found her. We thought she was drunk and we were kids who recognized an
opportunity when we saw it.”

“So she just
happened to have a brain
injury? How do you explain that?”

Steve
snickered. “Come on out here
honey. Tell the nice Sheriff how you were jealous of Liz and you got
someone to
tell her I was waiting in the locker room. When she came in, you were
waiting
for her with a barbell from the weight room, and,” he shrugged his
shoulders,
“you sure taught her a lesson.”

Cindy shrank
into herself and collapsed
to the floor. “Our deal…”

“Our deal was
that I’d marry you and
give the kid a name and you wouldn’t tell anyone about the rape. My
side was to
keep your secret about being a murderer so I could play college
football and
have a political career,” he spat out. “Now that my career is probably
shot
because of you, there’s no reason to hide your filthy secret anymore.

“And Sheriff,
while the statute of
limitations has expired for rape, I’m pretty sure that lying in wait
and
causing fatal injuries is Murder 1—No expiration date at all,” he added
smugly.
“Now take off these cuffs.”

“Nope,”

Steve’s head
jerked over to her. “Why
not?”

“You just
voluntarily made statements
that the D.A. is likely to decide make you an accessory after the fact.
We
hadn’t even asked you a question.”

Looking down at
the sorry mess that
was Cindy, Sandy asked, “Do you have anything you want to say?”

Cindy looked up
with red eyes and
tears washing her makeup down her face. “I want a lawyer.”

“Smart girl.”
Sandy looked up, “Okay,
guys. Put them both under arrest; her for murder, him for accessory
after the
fact. The D.A. can sort it all out.”

As she headed
back to the squad car,
Sandy felt like a brick wall had fallen off her shoulders. Her deputies
would
take care of the booking, and it was time for her to go home to tell
dad.

Driving along,
she spoke out loud to
Liz, as she had often over the years. “I got’em! We’re finally going to
get
some justice for you.” And she began humming a favorite show tune from
“Wicked”
that always reminded her of Liz, “… because I knew you, I’ve been
changed for
good.”

Donna Albrecht
is a San Francisco-based writer of fiction and non-fiction. This is her third
story published by OMDB. She can be reached at Donna@Albrechts.com